A Conversation with Dr. Mark Leary, Author of The Curse of the Self
Interviewer: When we look around at the problems in the world – from the personal problems we each face in our daily lives to the global problems that we confront as a society -- it almost seems that people can’t avoid creating difficulties for themselves. Why does the most intelligent species on earth continue to make such a mess of things?
Mark
Leary:
Philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and religious teachers have
grappled with that paradox for centuries. My view is
that many of these problems can be traced to the human ability
to self-reflect. Unlike all other animals, human beings can think consciously
about
themselves, and self-awareness sets them up for a host
of problems.
Interviewer: But don’t people need to think about themselves to function in everyday life? Isn’t self-awareness an essential aspect of being human?
ML: Absolutely. Only because we are able to self-reflect can we plan for the future, anticipate the consequences of our actions, take steps to improve ourselves, and control our own behavior. The problem is not that people think about themselves but rather that they think about themselves far too much.
Interviewer: So, the ability to self-reflect is a double-edged sword.
ML: Right. We need to think about ourselves occasionally, but none of us needs to think about ourselves as much as we do. And, we certainly don’t need to think about ourselves in the distorted, egoistic ways that we typically do. Excessive self-reflection and egoism are primary causes of human unhappiness.
Interviewer: What are some of the problems associated with self-reflection?
ML: For starters, problems arise when people are too preoccupied by their self-thoughts. When people experience stage fright or choke under pressure or fail to perform sexually because they are thinking too much about what they are doing, self-awareness has crept in where it’s not needed. Much of our behavior typically happens automatically – without conscious thought. And, if we start thinking consciously about it, we run into trouble.
Furthermore, people create a great deal of personal suffering in their own minds. We often make ourselves feel depressed, anxious, angry,or jealous, for example, simply by ruminating about the past or imagining what might happen in the future. In most instances, not only is all of this self-talk unnecessary but it creates a great deal of unhappiness and stress. And, it keeps many people up at night.
Interviewer: It’s as if people are responding to worlds that they have created in their own minds rather than to events that are happening in the real world.
ML: Right. And, to make matters worse, the worlds they create through self-talk are distorted in various ways. It’s well-documented, for example, that people’s interpretations of things that happen to them are often biased in an egotistical, self-serving direction. They tend to overestimate their positive qualities and underestimate their negative ones.
Interviewer: But aren’t people just trying to feel good about themselves – to raise their self-esteem?
ML: Perhaps, but raising self-esteem artificially–by interpreting events in biased, self-serving ways–can create a variety of problems. These egotistical perceptions can blind people to their own shortcomings, which leads to bad decisions because people don't see the situation clearly. And, seeing the world through the filter of one’s own ego interferes with their ability to change or improve themselves. If I don’t see my shortcomings and weaknesses accurately, I won’t be able to improve myself.
Interviewer: Clearly, under certain circumstances, egotism can distort people's views of themselves and the world. But how does this lead to the social problems that you mentioned?
ML: Part of the natural tendency to see oneself in overly flattering ways is to see one's social groups as better than other social groups, and this is true whether we’re talking about social clubs, racial and ethnic groups, religions, or nations. As a result of how the self naturally works, people often come to dislike those who are different from them and to fight with the members of other groups. A great deal of distrust, prejudice, and conflict in society, whether between individuals or between warring countries, can be traced to how the egoic self works.
Interviewer: Presumably, the ability to think consciously about themselves evolved among human beings because it had some adaptive advantage.
ML: Yes, the self was an important evolutionary adaptation. In fact, it's what makes human beings so different from other animals.
Interviewer: But, if that’s the case, why does self-awareness create so many problems?
ML: The short answer is that we live in a very different world from the one in which the self evolved. Self-awareness first appeared among hominids who lived as hunters, gatherers, and scavengers, but the ability to self-reflect quickly led to major changes in how people lived. In fact, the self seems to have been partly responsible for the development of culture, agriculture, and civilization. Those were major milestones in human history, but they also made the self more of a personal and social problem than it once was.
Interviewer: So, we are living today with a mental apparatus that isn’t quite up to the task given the way that society has developed.
ML: Yes. Self-reflection may be a greater problem in contemporary society than it was during most of human history because modern human beings spend far more of their time engaged in self-focused thought. We lie awake at night worrying about things that our prehistoric ancestors could not have imagined.
Interviewer: In The Curse of the Self, you talk about the fact that our ability to think about how other people are perceiving us is also an aspect of self-awareness. Why is that a curse?
ML: Some psychologists believe that self-awareness evolved to allow us to think about how other people see us. Only if we can think about ourselves can we think about about what other people might be thinking about us. That's another advantage of self-awareness, but even that can create problems. Most importantly, because we can imagine how other people perceive and evaluate us, we do a lot of dangerous and stupid things simply to impress others.
Interviewer: Such as?
ML: In the book, I discuss a variety of ways in which we jeopardize our health and safety in order to make impressions on others. For example, many people take risks to show how daring or cool they are, go to unhealthy extremes to lose weight, give themselves skin cancer because they want to look tan to other people, and sucumb to peer pressure in order to make desired impressions. We sometimes risk life and limb to make impressions on other people.
Interviewer: I was surprised to see a chapter in the book devoted to how religions around the world view the self.
ML: I find it intriguing that all religions view the egoic self in a negative light. Religious teachers throughout history -- Jesus, the Buddha, Rumi, and St. Paul, to name just a few -- have warned about the evils of the self. In fact, many aspects of organized religion can be viewed as ways to keep the self under control.
Interviewer: Isn't the message of this book contrary to the way most of us have been raised?
ML: In part. We've grown up thinking that the path to happiness involves always watching out for ourselves, planning for our future, analyzing ourselves, trying to improve, having high self-esteem, and being an "individual." Each of these is okay in moderation, but just about everybody overdoes it. And, when you become too self-focused, too egoistic, it backfires. So we end up creating many problems and a great deal of unhappiness without even realizing it. The Curse of the Self is an effort to show people how they are sometimes their own worst enemies and to offer ways of reducing the curse.